The Second Riding Lesson :-O

I said I'd give riding longer- I mean, how can you decide if you like something when you only give it one chance, right?
So today I woke up early, put on my blue jeans, a t-shirt, my getting-dirtier paddock boots (isn't that awesomely authentic? :) , and grabbed my gloves and helmet. When Kate, my sister, and I pulled up to the stable today, there were a lot more people there. A group of girls was sitting by one ring, talking and watching another girl who was working a horse inside the ring. They all looked to be around my age. But they also looked experienced. Greeeeat. I knew that they'd be watching me, sizing me up, seeing how good (or bad) I was. Yay for me, right?
Well, apparently this made me try harder or something, because today's lesson went somewhat better than Monday's.
Let's see if I can sum up why.
I mounted without trouble again, and started walking the horse. We walked. The instructor, just like last time, instructed me (surprise, surprise right? The instructor, instructing me! Crazy!) to keep my heels down, toes out, hands forward, don't pull on the bit, shoulders back, back arched a bit, and HEELS DOWN!
And I think I'm getting a bit better.
I got the horse to trot today. :D Okay, true, it took a lot of kicking, squeezing, and clucking, but she trotted! She slowed down at almost every turn though, but we're getting somewhere. Especially since this horse has been used a lot lately at the stable's various camps and lessons and leases.
Now trotting while posting and steering is, like I said last time, kind of hard. Only this time, we weren't on a lunge line. We were trotting all around the ring. And I really didn't want her to go to the jumps, because... well, you know what would happen then. :-O
And I could almost (which is a relative term... or is it not? Huh) steer the mare. But there were two orange traffic cones at one end and I was supposed to steer around them. "Supposed" is the key word, by the way. Because half the time, the mare would go around one and cut through the other while I concentrated on the up, down, up, down, up, down beat of the trot, or my posting beat. So that was a slight minus. Oh, and the whole heel down thing, but I'll get that. Apparently my right side has more control (the instructor told me that) and looked to be in better form than the left side, heel and hand-wise. I could see the riders watching me too, trying to see how experienced I was or am. If any of them are reading this, I guess they found out- NOT VERY! :)
Overall though, it was a good day.
But it WAS really really hot. A foreshadowing of later in the day, apparently. Talk about boiling. *PHEW*
You might be happy to know I signed up for more lessons next week. One is at ten in the morning and one is at five o'clock at night. Hope it goes well.
Wish me luck again!! :D